


Getting the Hang of Thursdays

by soft_october



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Space, End of the World, First Kiss, Fluff and Humor, Idiots in Love, M/M, Romantic Comedy, but it gets better, what happens when you cross Good Omens with Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-18
Updated: 2020-12-08
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:40:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25979884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soft_october/pseuds/soft_october
Summary: On Thursday morning, Aziraphale awoke to find his shop about to be bulldozed.The world was destroyed shortly thereafter.Featuring Crowley as an alien from the vague region of Alpha Centauri, dual Presidents of the Galaxy Gabriel and Beelzebub (and their stolen spaceship), six proper ways to present your crush of six years with a bouquet of T’hangnia blossoms, and culinary adventures at the end of the Universe.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 165
Kudos: 110





	1. Chapter 1

The shop stood on a rather fashionable corner of a rather fashionable street in SoHo, which _had_ been considered fashionable and now was well on its way to being positively bourgeois. It was not a grand or imposing shop by any means: indeed, there was dust in the windows, books piled high to the ceiling, and it was staffed by a single bookseller who lived above the shop in a small flat. The books, such as they were, did nothing but sit about all day waiting to be read, and the bookseller did his best to ensure that no one else could. We should probably call him something else, like a bookNOTseller, but that’s a made up word and this is a very serious story, and we’ll hold no truck with things like that. 

Whatever you’d like to call him, his name was Aziraphale, and he was middle aged, going a bit round in the middle, possessed of a pair of eyes that could be described as “kind looking” as long as you didn’t ask him if you might purchase a book, and utterly uninterested in the goings on of the neighborhood beyond where the most delicious delicacies could be found. It may not seem unusual, that when a pair of gruff looking workmen in menacing coats entered his shop one day and told him it had been purchased by their employer and he had a month and a half to clear out, that Aziraphale took one look at them and shooed them out of his store with a broom, like an old hedge witch clearing out yet another questing prince from her doorstep. 

Had Aziraphale been, oh, I don’t know, a being of great and terrible ethereal power or something, that would have been the end of it. But he wasn’t, this time, this time he was just a man and that was _very much_ _not_ the end of it. Because the gruff looking men went back to their cigar chomping employer and told him what happened and he called up all his filthy capitalist friends and moved the demolition date up three weeks just to be a real dick about the whole thing. 

So, at ten o’clock on Thursday morning, Aziraphale woke with a start from the sofa in his back room to a great grumbling and droning going on right outside his door. He nodded to the bulldozer sitting across the street through the smudged little window and went straight to the bathroom to wash his face.

As he stared at what he felt was a bit of a sorry sight in the mirror, remnants of his memories of the previous evening came back to him like a shattered china cup: in bits and pieces. 

Crowley, Aziraphale thought, with a warm sort of giggle of emotion in his chest that usually accompanied such things. 

Ah yes, Crowley. 

They’d been out the previous evening, hadn’t they? Crowley had gotten absolutely knocked down, sodding drunk and gone on and on about the end of the world, or some such nonsense. He asked Aziraphale to run away with him to Alpha Centauri and cried on his shoulder when Aziraphale told him no. This wasn’t cause of too much concern. Crowley was always doing rather odd things when he’d had too much. Once he’d delivered to the entire pub a lecture on dolphins, and how they were the smartest beings on the planet. A police car once whipped past the pub (most likely on its way to bother some people just out for a bit of fun) and Crowley raced out the back door like the hounds of hell were at his heels, claiming later he was certain that the lights atop the car matched the exact pattern of a Deymonik UFO which he was sure had come to take him away from “this _wonderful_ planet earth with all its absolutely _ridiculous_ creatures.” 

Aziraphale supposed that Crowley got so maudlin over Earth and the creatures on it because Crowley used to be a part of some save the world organization back at uni, and whenever he got drunk he remembered all the pamphlets and banners packed away in the back of a closet somewhere and felt guilty about them. (It wasn’t that, not quite, but that exact scenario is what happened to Aziraphale, and humans are extremely skilled at projecting their own sins and such onto others.) 

He never suspected that the real reason Crowley loved the Earth was because Crowley was an alien from a small planet in the vague region of Alpha Centauri. Aziraphale wasn’t _so_ far off. Crowley really _had_ been in some sort of save the galaxy organization back at uni. Unfortunately, the Intergalactic Government, like most governments, didn’t take to kindly to those sorts of ideas, and had tried to deal with him accordingly. _We_ would call Crowley a political refugee, if he were from Earth, but he wasn’t, so we will just call him what he was: on the run. He considered himself quite fortunate to have stumbled across Earth, because Earth was the most wonderful place Crowley had ever seen. 

(This was largely because Earth was the only place in the whole galaxy that had Aziraphale, but more on that later.) 

The fact that Aziraphale did _not_ know that his friend wasn’t human was a testament to just how far a human was willing to go to be polite. He never once asked about the yellow eyes Crowley his behind a cavalcade of fashionable sunglasses, or how his spine and hips didn’t seem to match any sort of human anatomy, or the way his middle name was just J, or how he never quite managed to reign in a slight hiss on his s’s, especially when he was drunk. 

Aziraphale was English. It would have been rude. 

Back in the present, Aziraphale had just realized that the bulldozer across the street was now rumbling towards his bookshop at a breakneck pace, and after a few shocked gasps that did not hinder the machine in the least, Aziraphale did the next logical thing and ran outside to lie in front of it. 

It was here that Crowley found him.

“Come down here and I’ll knock your teeth out!” Aziraphale shouted at the foreman, who had been fruitlessly attempting to talk Aziraphale out of lying on the pavement for the last half hour. 

“Hello Aziraphale,” Crowley said, with none of his usual suavity. Aziraphale had a few of his own problems to deal with at the moment, but we don’t, so it would be incredibly rude if we didn’t notice how his face had turned a peculiar shade of spoiled milk, or how his hands shook like the legs of a chihuahua facing down a dog six times its size. “Look, are you busy right now?” 

For the six years they had known each other, Aziraphale had never been busy. Oh, he had had things to do, certainly, but he never would have referred to himself as busy. Aziraphale had no concept of calling his schedule ‘full.’ So he was quite shocked to find himself saying -

“I’m… I’m afraid I rather am, at the moment,” Aziraphale explained, from his prone position in front of a grumbling bulldozer. 

“We’ve got to talk,” said Crowley, continuing on as if Aziraphale had given him his usual answer. “Like, right now.”

“It’s alright dear,” Aziraphale went on, assuming this was about Crowley's outburst the previous evening. “Your tears came out of the coat just fine, it’s nothing to be worried about.”

“That’s not - look, I’m not sure what…” he threw his arms in the direction of the machines and men hired to operate them (currently all gathered around Raoul Biggs' phone, watching a cat fall asleep on top of a large dog). “All this is about. But I know that you’ve got to come with me right now and we have to talk about the most important thing you’ve ever heard.” 

Crowley's chest heaved. 

Aziraphale felt his heart flutter. 

He _thought_ he’d caught Crowley looking at him in a way that meant certain things several times throughout their aquaintance, but every time Aziraphale gave him an opening, or tried to flirt, or did anything that might have taken their relationship past chummy pats on the back and the occasional brush of fingers as glasses were handed back and forth Crowley had breezed right past the opportunity as if he didn’t even notice it. 

He hadn’t. When you liked someone in the vague region of Alpha Centauri, you presented them with a proper bouquet of T’hangnia blossoms and prayed your families didn’t have a blood vendetta going back centuries. (Weddings in the vague region of Alpha Centauri were often unfortunate affairs, and not for the usual reasons.) Crowley was fairly certain he and Aziraphale were safe on _that_ front, but as there were no T’hangnia trees to be found on Earth, Crowley had been at quite a loss. 

Aziraphale didn’t _know_ any of that, of course. Poor bastard just thought he’d been misreading the signs. 

Despite the cultural nuances that had kept them out of each other’s beds for six years, Aziraphale had never lost hope, and here, on the most _dreadful_ of mornings, was Crowley, begging to tell him something of the utmost importance. The fact that he was out of bed before one in the afternoon was a feat to be rewarded, but how could Aziraphale simply _abandon_ the bookshop in its hour of need? 

“What - what is it about?” asked Aziraphale, trying to collect as much evidence as he could. If he allowed the bulldozer to wreak havoc on his shop on the off chance Crowley was about to declare his undying devotion only to hear about a sale down at the garden center (something that fascinated Crowley to no end) he would be quite put out. “They want to knock down the bookshop, you know,” Aziraphale explained. 

“Is that all?” Exasperated, Crowley looked about for someone in an exciting hat. (His years on Earth had taught him that whoever was in charge was usually wearing one.) “You there!” he shouted at who he had correctly identified as the foreman. (There was a bit of a larger design on the front of his white helmet.) 

“Me?”

“You’re in charge here?” Crowley ripped off his glasses, and fixed the man with what he hoped was an intimidating glare. 

“As much as anyone is.”

“Tell the rest of them to clear out!”

“Whyever would I -” 

He was about to finish his sentence when he realized that he would like nothing more than to do _exactly_ that. Perhaps it was the strange yellow of the man’s eyes, or the way his hair seemed to flame about him, or the imposing tenor of his voice. (It was none of those things, Crowley looked the way you do when you're trying to fit three hours worth of errands that absofuckinglutely need to get done into the span of thirty minutes, but being not of Earth he was possessed of certain mental senses, one of which was projecting a clear signal to outside threats to Clear Out Because Things Were About To Get Real.) The foreman, all those gathered around Raoul Biggs' phone, and even Raoul Biggs himself suddenly got the strongest feeling that they should be somewhere else, anywhere else, and if they didn't something terrible was going to happen to them. Something terrible happened anyway, but this story is about Crowley and Aziraphale, not the construction workers who tried to tear down the bookshop, so we won't be following them.

Aziraphale got up from the pavement like a weed that had just gained sentience: overwhelmed. 

“Crowley, why did they -” Crowley already grabbed Aziraphale’s hand and started to drag him down the street towards the pub. 

“Crowley what’s going on?” He twisted out of Crowley’s grip. This was not beginning to a romantic overture, this was something else, something - 

“Just, let’s get to the pub and I’ll -”

“I’m not taking another step until you -” It must be Thursday. Aziraphale never could get the hang of Thursdays. 

“The world is ending, Aziraphale.” Crowley looked so lost, so broken, that in that moment, no matter how absurd it was, Aziraphale had no choice but to believe him. (Though he had woken up and immediately chosen to lie down in front of a bulldozer, and wasn’t in any state to be deciding what was and was not absurd.) 

“How long do we have?” 

Crowley looked at his fancy watch. 

“About seven minutes.” 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You guys have NO idea how thrilling it is to me that y'all are into this. Summarily, I have scattered a ton of references throughout the work for your enjoyment.

Here’s something you should probably know about Earth.

The Polarisian who owned Earth (at least as far hundred year old star charts and deeds were concerned) was one of those hippy dippy types who used it as his summer home to get “back to nature.” He, like Crowley, thought the earth was a pretty funky place, man, and, like, you should get there sometime. Earth was, at various points in his descriptions, “a wild, just totally virgin landscape,” “the _best_ place to do Vrooms” (vrooms were like shrooms if shrooms sent you on a decades long trip in which you actually became a famous Earth Comedian who was always a little off and then vanished into the ether among conspiracies about your own death as soon as the vrooms wore off), and “home of Edgar Bergman, who should _really_ be called Bedgar Bangman, if you know what I mean.” This last was always said with finger guns aimed at the addressee and a raised eyebrow.

(The addressee usually sighed. Sometimes they rolled their eyes)

The Betelgeusian who bought it from him three days earlier described it as “a lovely future parking lot.” (He’d invested heavily in a future Venus based theme park which promised to be “The Hoopiest Place In the Galaxy.”)

In the manner of individuals such as themselves throughout space and time, neither of them had any regard for the natives already living there.

This is why, on Thursday morning, just as a bulldozer grumbled its way towards Aziraphale’s shop, a small fleet of ships grumbled through the solar system, with the intention of obliterating the small blue and green marble circling Sol with all the brutal efficiency of a redneck with a chainsaw faced with the tree that fell on his pickup. None of the very fancy and very expensive infrastructure built for this exact purpose managed to detect them. Even the most dedicated alien conspiracy theorist had no idea what hovered just a few hundred miles above his head. This was a shame because it would have made him so happy his head may have exploded before the Earth did. The only place they registered at all was within the complicated crystalline clockwork of what Crowley had always described as his fancy wristwatch.

It was not _just a fancy_ wristwatch.

No, what Crowley called his wristwatch (because if he used the real name for it humans would have done that thing where they try and pronounce a foreign word over and over again somehow getting worse each time before everyone throws them wide eyed, tight smiles and they stop) was in reality a guide to life, the universe, and everything, a GPS (galaxy positioning system), a communication device, and a personal computer.

(It was basically a xeno-iphone except it didn't break a year and a half after its purchase.) One function of this device was that it served to signal passing ships that someone needed a ride. Crowley needed a ride right now.

Very badly.

Aziraphale found himself at the pub round the corner, Crowley’s hand clamped to his bicep and four pints in front of him.

“Drink up,” Crowley said, pushing the glasses towards Aziraphale. “Do you have a towel?”

“A - a _what_?”

“Nevermind,” Crowley mumbled. “Have an extra for you in the Bentley.”

Enough has been written on the subject of towels, and why one should always know where one’s towel is, by far superior authors to this writer, that I shall not elucidate further on the subject past the obvious for the totally uninitiated.

You should always know where your towel is.

I know I _just_ said that in the previous paragraph.

It bears repeating.

Anyway, Crowley knew the importance of towels far better than almost anyone or anything on the planet, and, on the off chance that he ever felt like leaving Earth and Aziraphale agreed to come with him (it was possibly the only way he would ever consent to leave, after all) Crowley had found a shockingly white towel with lovely little golden trim on the in a shop and purchased it for Aziraphale immediately.

He had done this within the first three months of their acquaintance. (And not forgotten to get a matching one for himself.

Just in case.)

“That's... Very kind of you,” Aziraphale muttered, because he was nothing if not polite, even in the face of machinations that had succeeded in completely, utterly bewildering him. “But - I just mean - I’m -”

“Drink,” Crowley commanded. Other bar patrons were side-eying them, and Crowley smirked back in their general direction. Aziraphale, for lack of anything better to do and because he didn’t want people staring anymore than they already were, shrugged and began to drink.

His second pint was interrupted by a terrific noise that somehow sounded _exactly_ like when you’re lying in bed about to drift off to sleep when suddenly your stupid brain decides you’re falling and shakes you awake with a start.

“Damn,” said Crowley, who was familiar with the particular noise a spaceship produced by the A/D corporation sounded like right before it was about to fire. “Thought we had more time than this.”

Crowley grabbed Aziraphale’s hand, and while he would have loved to take the time to cherish the moment, to feel all sorts of ways from the top of his head to the tips of his toes, those sorts of feelings are a bit inappropriate when all the bits of you are being scrambled down into photons and unscrambling a few miles above your last location, and downright presumptuous when the object of your affections is taking his last, wide eyed look at the pub around him before it all goes tits up.

Then, without even the decency of countdown narrated by a woman with a crisp accent, it was gone.

There was a rumbling, then a blink, then a dreadful silence.

The spaceships sped off into the black, and the moon found herself alone.

She began to drift.

* * *

Aziraphale awoke in what he suspected was a service corridor in some vast and unknowable spaceship.

There were several factors that led to this conclusion. There were an appropriate number of soothing bloops and bleeps, for one, and far less chrome than he assumed would be present on the bridge. Not a single lens flare could be located. It was dark, cool, and Crowley was sitting against the wall with his head between his knees breathing very hard and fast against a sign marked “service corridor.”

Ah.

Some distant part of him acknowledged that it was unusual he should be able to read signs on an alien spaceship at all, and that part of him was promptly piled on and silenced by the rest of Aziraphale’s id in a desperate bid to keep him innocent of a great and terrible truth that would certainly leave him in the same state as the friend who, up until very, very recently, Aziraphale believed was a human from the planet Earth.

“Crowley?” Aziraphale laid his hand on Crowley’s shoulder and his breathing stuttered. “Crowley what - what happened? Where are we?” Crowley allowed himself a few more deep breaths. (Deep breathing was a calming Earth technique Crowley of which Crowley had become overly fond, even though the mechanisms he used to respirate did not even closely resemble that of an average human. He liked the ritual of the thing, the same way you might enjoy wandering into the kitchen, staring into the refrigerator without taking anything, and then returning to sitting in front of the telly.)

“Safe,” Crowley managed to mutter after his sixth or seventh breath. He could not look Aziraphale in the eyes.

“Where is ‘safe,’ Crowley?” Crowley thought Aziraphale was speaking very calmly for someone who had had such a difficult morning.

“A spaceship,” Crowley said to a mote of dust between his shiny shoes. “Betelgeusian, by the look of it.”

“Ah,” Aziraphale replied, which, again, was not what Crowley expected. “Well, can we - I’m not quite sure how it works - but I’m sure those gentlemen who want to knock down the bookshop have finished watching those cat videos by now.” (They had.) “Might we not just - go back?” This speech increased in pitch until the last bit was nothing more than a bit of a high squeak, and at last Crowley understood why Aziraphale was acting so - so fucking _chipper_.

“We _can’t_ , Aziraphale,” Crowley said, very slowly. He raised his eyes to meet Aziraphale’s at last, despaired at the simple, stubborn hope he found there. “Don’t panic.”

“Why would I panic?” Aziraphale’s voice was swiftly approaching a frequency only audible to dogs and a very specific sort of bird-like creature that lived on a planet called Vongenaught. “Of course we _can_ , Crowley, just - just teleport or warp us back down, however you got us _up_ here -”

“It’s _gone_ , Aziraphale.” Crowley ran a shaking hand through his uncharacteristically untidy hair. “The Earth is gone.” He crossed his arms and drummed his fingers along his upper arms. “Please don’t panic?”

Crowley was making repeated pleas for Aziraphale to stay calm because he had lived on Earth for six years, which is five years, eleven months, three weeks and three days longer than it took him to understand that the Earth being gone would be a concept almost impossible for any human to fully comprehend. (It would have been five years, eleven months, four weeks and three days, but Crowley had spent most of that first week absolutely shitcanned drunk and couldn’t be expected to realize anything other than his lack of sobriety.) Most humans have difficulty dealing with the slightest change to their surroundings and, years later, will begin driving to their house and will get three quarters of the way there before they remember they haven’t lived in that house for seven years and also that the house was torn down to make way for condos. (Things on Earth are _always_ being torn down to make way for condos.)

When Crowley told Aziraphale that “the Earth is gone,” what Aziraphale heard was whatever you hear when you’re reading on your phone and someone is trying to hold a conversation with you. The intricacies of the statement did not register in the slightest, but the polite part of his brain attempted to match the solemn tone of Crowley’s statement by having Aziraphale respond with a grave nod.

“Do you understand?” Crowley asked.

“No,” said Aziraphale, who was rapidly paling as the parts of him occupied with preventing him from realizing the truth kept passing out from the strain. He shook his head again, harder, this time, as if that might dislodge reality and reset the universe.

“Aziraphale -” Crowley rose to his feet. He thought about taking Aziraphale’s hand to comfort him, fretted about the selfish implications of such an act then argued with himself it would be for Aziraphale’s benefit until his hand got fed up and grabbed Aziraphale’s all on its own. “Aziraphale, I’m sorry,” Crowley rasped. “It’s not there anymore. We got away but -”

“Crowley?” Aziraphale was blinking _furiously_.

“Yes?”

“I think I might be panicking.”

“Fuck.”

* * *

About the time Aziraphale was trying and failing to speedrun through the five stages of grief (couldn’t even get past denial, poor thing) the dual Presidents of the galaxy were about to unveil the latest in Anjel/Deymonik (A/D) technologies: the beautiful new spaceship _Soothsayer_.

 _Soothsayer_ was a masterclass in spaceships. A mediocre white male author would note that “she had curves in all the right places” and for once in his life that statement would finally make sense. The ship was the only one of its kind, outfitted with “just about as much software as we could cram in there,” as noted by one of its engineers, and was so intelligent that by the time of release the engineers were wondering if it might not be a little _too_ smart for its own good. She was also the fastest ship in the galaxy, covered in platinum that had been polished to a mirror like sheen, and was equipped with a clever, comforting (and only occasionally exasperated) voice. A/D had even gone the extra mile and paid an obscene amount of money to an interior designer to ensure that the beauty within the ship would match that without (at least until the person cutting the checks had looked in at the uncomfortable but quite fashionable sofas, chairs and strangely shaped tables and 86’d all of it in favor for a bridge that looked more like one he’d seen on the holotube.)

Anjel/Deymonik was the most powerful corporation in the galaxy. It was formed when their respective CEOs realized they’d been wasting their own time and money competing with each other when they could have been taking the _rest_ of the galaxy’s money by working together instead! Those CEOs quickly signed a merger agreement, drained some rather suspicious looking accounts, and fucked off together to Majorca, which, incidentally enough was not only the name of one of the most beautiful places on the gaping hole in the universe formally known as Earth, but is _also_ the name of the most beautiful planet in the galaxy. No one has seen them for years. But the company kept on developing and innovating and creating things that the inhabitants of the galaxy were manipulated into paying for by an esoteric snarl of advertising, not the least of which was when the dual presidents of the galaxy were called in to tell the citizens of the galaxy how good the newest product was. You might be wondering why presidents should be so involved in private industry, but if you are, you haven’t been paying much attention, have you?

President Gabirel, from a fine, upstanding family in the western regions of the Horsehead Nebula, smiled as he took the podium. President Beelzebub scowled beside him. The people adored President Gabriel. He had a good, strong jaw, dark hair, lavender eyes, and he told them the things they wanted to hear in a strong baritone.

They were _terrified_ of President Beelzebub.

Gabriel read handsomely and dutifully from his prepared (not by him) remarks. He talked of a new era in space travel, of journeying to other galaxies, of conquering those other galaxies with superior might and bootstraps mentality.

Beelzebub rolled their eyes and checked their watch.

If this pomp and lack of circumstance took much longer, they’d never be able to get away with it.

What is “it”?

“It” refers to the imminent theft of the newest, fastest, most beautiful _ship_ in the galaxy by at least one of the _presidents_ of the galaxy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All the Soothsayer's engineers sound exactly like Cave Johnson.
> 
> Come yell about space with me here [@soft-october-night](https://soft-october-night.tumblr.com/)!!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ENJOY, Y'ALL

Of all the starships of all the fleets of all the galaxy, why did Crowley have to show up on his? That’s exactly what Hastur would have said if he had ever seen Casablanca. He hadn’t, and, now that the Earth and all its films were destroyed, he never would. What he _did_ say was something along the lines of “Well, fuck me,” which is an accurate translation of that line from Casablanca, anyway.

He said this as he sat at his desk, poking at a security feed which showed Crowley, wanted criminal, and a human futzing about in a service corridor. The human seemed to be having trouble adjusting to the atmosphere, as he was breathing very heavily and Crowley was flapping about him in a rather anxious manner. Crowley finally sat the human down and wrapped him one very fluffy towel, considered the situation for a moment, and then employed a second. This did look quite comfortable, and Hastur scoffed.

Hastur scoffed for several reasons.

One, Crowley was wanted for treason against his planet, and the idea that a traitor would show so much ugly, raw, _caring_ emotion was hilarious to him.

Two, no one had ever wrapped up Hastur in a comfortable towel, not even _once_ , and he was awfully jealous and trying to hide it.

(He then did what people everywhere do when they’re trying to hide an ugly emotion: pick up the phone and talk to someone about something completely unrelated.)

“Ligur,” he said into the phone.

“Yeah?” came the voice at the other end of the line. As captain of the ship, Ligur would have the final word on Crowley and his human’s fate.

“Seems we have a couple of stowaways,” Hastur muttered. He had seen that in a holofilm one, and always wanted to say it.

“Crowley,” Ligur drawled back as he observed his own security feed, in a voice that was even more dismissive than Hastur’s.

“What should we do about it?” Ligur thought about it for a moment, and then he grinned from ear to ear and it was horrifying.

“Airlock?” he asked, rather brightly.

“Oh. Fine,” said Hastur, who had been composing an essay he was tentatively titling _“Fifteen More Creative Ways to Kill Someone than Sending Them Out Through the Fucking Airlock,”_ and was disappointed that they would never come to fruition. “I’ll meet you down there.”

Ligur hung up the phone and rose with as much dignity as he could muster from his captain’s chair. He did this entirely for his own benefit, as there was no audience of officers on the bridge to appreciate his solemnity or gravitas. Indeed, there was hardly any _crew_ on the entire ship at all. Automation had taken over jobs of navigation, communication, engineering, medicine, and all the other departments which had once been occupied by many different creatures in brightly colored uniforms. Hastur and Ligur were there only by intergalactic mandate (and they weren’t quite sure they were altogether _needed_.)

Crowley popping onto their ship was the most exciting thing that had happened to them in their three years with the fleet, and sending him out into the vacuum of space would at least be good for a laugh.

* * *

“Everyone get back!” Beezelbub commanded, holding the laser pistol to President Gabriel’s head.

“Not so hard,” Gabriel stage whispered. Beelzebub rolled their eyes.

“I’ll be taking the _Soothsayer_ ,” Beelzebub continued, backing up the gangplank and wishing Gabriel would struggle just like, _at all_. “And if anyone tries to stop me I’ll blast his head clean off!”

“No!” Gabriel moaned, in a terrible approximation of how he sounded when they rehearsed this. “Please. Stop! ...Don’t!”

Not a single person moved towards them.

“I mean it!” Beelzebub shouted, taking another few steps towards the door, swinging the laser pistol from side to side. They lost their grip on Gabriel’s coat and he helpfully waited until their fingers found their place again.

The guards smiled and nodded, resting with their fingers safely off the triggers. One waved at them.

“This is going quite well,” Gabriel hissed out of the side of his mouth.

“Shut up.”

Beelzebub managed to not trip over the threshold of the _Soothsayer_ , and without even having to slam the control panel the door shut behind them, and they were left in darkness.

A brief note on the presidents of the galaxy:

You know that romcom? The one where the two leads hate each other at first but then they start doing the do and then try and pretend that they didn’t catch feelings for each other even though it's _obvious_ to everyone that they did, and right around the time you’re screaming at the television for them to “have a fucking conversation, already” the end of the second act rolls around and there’s some kind of sad part before the fun and funny ending where they end up together and everything is fine?

The presidents of the galaxy were a bit like if you took that romcom and smashed it together with any of those films where the president continues to ignore a growing threat: they were incompetant, in _way_ over their heads, hopelessly besotted with one another, wouldn't know a passable communication skill if it slapped them across the face while begging them to talk about their feelings, and more likely than not going to end killed by some incredibly preventable disaster.

There was a moment, a VERY brief one, just after the door had shut and the emergency lights were on, in which the two of them were standing very close to each other, where Gabriel was thinking how well the red glow of the lamps accentuated Beelzebub’s scowl and wondered what it would be like if he just touched their hair when -

“Oh!” said the robot who just rolled out of one of the corridors. “Um. Hello.”

Beelzebub whirled around, got off one shot with their laser pistol that ricocheted off the robot’s chest plate and vanished somewhere into the depths of the ship.

“Don’t!” Gabriel said, wresting the pistol away from them. “It’s a robot!” Gabriel’s childlike glee was matched by the awkward laugh the robot emitted to hear such delight from a grown adult.

“A robot?” Beelzebub asked while narrowing their eyes suspiciously. This was so akin to their resting face that neither the robot nor Gabriel took note “No one told me about any robot on the ship.” The robot shrugged in helpless apology for his own existence.

“N.E.W.T., huh?” Gabriel asked, reading the acronym on the robot’s breastplate. “What’s that supposed to stand for?”

“New engineering with technology,” Newt muttered in shame. “Honestly I think they just liked the acronym and came up with some sciencey sounding nonsense to fit -”

“Am I the _only one_ who remembers that we’re trying to _steal this ship?_ ” Beelzebub cried.

“You’re absolutely right,” Gabriel said, because, in his experience, this was something Beelzebub really enjoyed hearing in response to their shouting. “Let's fly this thing!” He sprang into one of the deep bucket seats in what he assumed was the bridge. He handsomely pressed several buttons next to him, and his smile did not fracture one iota when the ship began blaring very unhappy sounds and flashing red lights.

“Hi,” said the ship, in its very pretty and very capable voice. “It looks like you’re trying to steal me. Would you like some help with that?”

“Yes,” said Beelzebub, at the exact same time that Gabriel said “No thanks.” Beelzebub got the distinct impression that the ship was pursing her lips.

“Okay, well, there’s lots of men with guns outside getting orders from men with very fancy hats, so I’m going to go ahead and get us out of here while you guys have an argument.”

“We can handle ourselves perfectly fine!” Gabriel cried, afraid that not being able to pilot a ship would be seen as a sign of weakness.

“ _One_ of us can handle ourselves perfectly fine,” Beelzebub spat. “The _other_ will go on and on about all the acting classes they’ve taken and yet _still_ manage to look cheerful while playing a hostage.” (This one stung a bit. Gabriel was very proud of his acting classes. Judging by the way everyone would stare at him while he was delivering his monologues, he considered himself one of the best students his teacher had ever seen.)

The pair continued their bickering as the ship turned its own shield on, deflected the lasers the soldiers were firing at it away from the crowd, lifted itself into the sky and shot off into the stars.

“That was very well done,” said Newt, who just rolled onto the bridge.

“Why thank you,” Gabriel said, certain both that this accolade was directed at him and that it was well deserved.

“He wasn’t talking to you,” said the ship. “Were you?”

“Well I… I may not have been… What I mean is…”

“Oh, hey look at this!” the ship exclaimed.

“Look at _what_?” three separate voices asked, just as the ship winked them out of existence.

* * *

“I didn’t mean for this to happen,” Crowley said, unhelpfully.

“I’m sure you didn’t,” Aziraphale sighed. Crowley’s hand dangled uselessly at his side, and Aziraphale wanted to take it, but he wasn’t sure if their captors would be so keen on the idea.

The two of them were being transported down to the airlock at gunpoint by two of the most unpleasantly smelling beings Aziraphale had ever encountered, and Aziraphale had once attended an outdoor music festival.

“Stop talking up there,” Hastur said, and poked Aziraphale in the back with his laser rifle for emphasis. “No talking on the way to the airlock.”

“Is that a rule?” Ligur asked him, quite seriously. He’d been sort of heaved up the chain of command into the captain’s role, you see, and didn’t quite have the manual memorized yet. (He didn’t have _any_ of the manual memorized yet.)

“Sure,” said Hastur, who was making this up as he went along. “But - uh - I’m pretty sure _we_ can talk.”

“Probably shouldn’t risk it,” Ligur said. “Just to be safe.”

“Who would hear us?”

“We would,” said Crowley, who really wanted the two of them to shut the fuck up already so he could think for a second.

“No talking on the way to the airlock!” Ligur commanded, with a sharp poke of his own rife. Oh, this was quite fun! This was _exactly_ why he’d signed up!

If Ligur was having his best day in quite some time, Aziraphale was having the worst day ever. The bookshop was gone, Earth was gone, and in about ten minutes _he_ would be gone and so would Crowley and he never even told -

“In there,” Hastur barked, and shoved the two of them forward into a narrow little chamber.

“Wish we got to do this every day,” Ligur said, as the door slammed shut.

For a moment there was nothing but the sound of two beings breathing very hard and very fast, as I’m sure you would do if you knew your death was imminent and your crush was just, _right there_ and you were trying to find the right words to have a suitably tragic yet romantic end.

A robotic imitation of a woman with a crisp accent began an ominous countdown.

Aziraphale was still wrapped in their towels.

“I’m sorry about the Bentley,” Aziraphale whispered, because it seemed like something to say. But Crowley’s response to this was to reach into his bag and yank out a piece of paper, twisting and tearing at it in a way that suggested to Aziraphale that he had almost, but not quite, gone entirely mad.

“Crowley what are you -”

“Just hang on a moment -”

“No - Crowley now just listen I -”

“We’ve only got a few seconds and I _know_ I don’t have the proper arrangement of T’hangnia blossoms but -” Crowley frantically pressed the twist of paper into his hands, and Aziraphale realized it was supposed to resemble a strange sort of flower. Aziraphale looked into Crowley’s eyes and saw the same desperation he felt.

“- And I know it’s not orange - it’s not even a flower, really, but I can’t just let us die without -”

“Crowley!”

“What?!”

And Aziraphale kissed him.

Then before Crowley even realized what was happening, the airlock opened, and all the bits of rubbish that had been in that little room with them began to drift out to space, mucking and tumbling about on the beginning of their journey to the Great Orion Spacejunk patch. Among them should have been the frozen, liplocked bodies of an alien from the vague region of Alpha Centauri and the very last human in the universe.

But Aziraphale and Crowley were not there.

* * *

Here’s what makes the _Soothsayer_ so special.

Look, computers are hard, sometimes. _Especially_ computers that make up most of the inside of spaceships. There’s loads of lens flares and digital readouts and screens, about a million lights and switches, half of which don't even do anything and are just there so some handsome, hotshot pilot can flip them while spitting out a witty quip to impress the pretty new person he just brought on board with the express intent of showing them _such_ a good time he would also be able to show them the “totally jammin’” sound setup in the captain’s quarters.

Now, the engineers who designed those very same computers and spaceships would very much like to be exactly that cool. They practiced their quips in the shower, tried to perfect their smirks in the mirror, but the truth was that when they flipped all those switches the ship would like as not give a great and terrible shudder before emitting noises and odors that both sounded and smelled like a frat house after taco night.

Needless to say, the pretty person they brought to impress was _not_ , and left soon after, in the arms of the first hotshot pilot who flashed a smile and asked “this nerd bothering you?”

So all those engineers, tired of losing their dates, decided to build a ship that would do all the thinking for them, a ship that, no matter what buttons were pushed, would always take its occupants to something really cool and really interesting and nowhere near any hotshot pilots at all.

(The captain’s quarters of the _Soothsayer_ also had the most impressive speaker and subwoofer loadout in the galaxy. Just for good measure.)

And the _Soothsayer_ , after running all the calculations, simulations, permutations and combinations, decided that the most interesting thing that could possibly happen in the next five minutes was the rescue of a wanted criminal and the hapless human he brought along with him right after they had kissed each other under the very real belief that they were about to die at any moment.

This pair, Crowley and Azirapahle, materialized on the bridge, still in each other's arms. Crowley’s face was red and he let out a squeak that was alarmed and delighted both at the kiss and their failure to expire in the cold void of space.

The presidents, however, were not impressed with _either_ of these.

“Crowley,” said Beelzebub, the moment they laid eyes on him. “The traitor.” Crowley closed his eyes, and turned to face his sibling.

“That’s not a nice word,” he said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tag yourself I'm a hotshot pilot who lures dates away 
> 
> I'm here if you wanna talk! [@soft-october-night](https://soft-october-night.tumblr.com/)!!


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi y'all I'm back its been A MONTH OR TWO. Enjoy!

Aziraphale was wearing the sort of nervous smile you might wear if you had just kissed your crush of _several_ years, then immediately been thrown out of an airlock, transported to a mysterious spaceship where a tall, square jawed looking fellow was gawping at you and a small, very angry looking person was glaring at your crush as if they were about to murder him any minute.

It wasn’t a very _good_ smile.

“Um, hello,” Aziraphale began, but got no further in his attempt at a polite introduction before the shorter one interrupted him.

“What is this?” they asked Crowley, pointing at Aziraphale with a sharp fingernail. “Is he the one that’s been hiding you all these years?”

“He’s not - he’s an Earthling -” Crowley tried to explain, but it felt a bit like his chest had been blown through with a rather large sort of laser, and, against the wishes of his entire body, stepped back from Aziraphale. His fingers cursed him the moment they slipped from the warmth of Aziraphale’s jumper.

“I’m a bookseller,” said Aziraphale, unhelpfully.

“I don’t care if you’re the finest purveyor of Pan-Galatic Gargle blasters this side of the Horsehead Nebula, you weren’t invited on this ship and -”

“That’s not quite true!” The ship, the _Soothsayer_ interrupted. “In fact, if we’re going to discuss who was actually welcomed onto this ship and who wasn’t, I’d like to point out that the two beings I just invited onto the ship weren’t the ones who tried to steal me off the airstrip.”

“ _Steal_ off the-” Crowley marveled, a sly sort of smile forming on his face, an inverted form of the expression taking root on his sibling’s.

“It was a _very_ clever plan,” Gabriel began.

“It wasn’t!” the ship replied.

“It would have gone _fine_ if someone had remembered their lines -” grumbled Beelzebub.

Aziraphale, who could barely keep up with the fact that the earth had been destroyed, that he had been thrown out of an airlock into the cold void of space, that Crowley had _kissed_ him (or had he kissed Crowley? Well, details, details.), and that they seem to have, quite improbably, run into some relative of another or Crowley’s and their… (lackey? Partner? It was a bit hard to tell), their _someone_ , at any rate, was coming to the realization that he was not about to be disintegrated, or thrown out of _another_ airlock, or harmed in seemingly anyway at a rate that was lightspeed for the level of stress and anxiety he was currently experiencing. He thought he might try and say something, to smooth things over. (Aziraphale fancied himself _good_ with families of friends, or partners. This was a complete misconception that everyone around him had been far too polite to correct.) But before he could find an opening in the conversation which rapidly seemed to be devolving into an argument between the other three people and the ship, Crowley nudged his sharp chin in Gabriel’s direction.

“And who is this, then? Some hotshot pilot you hired to get you out of here? They always were your type.” Gabriel puffed up like a Gethenese Swoywobble (which is strangely similar to the common Earth pufferfish) at this notion.

“I _used_ to be a hotshot pilot,” Gabriel began.

“No, that doesn’t sound right,” chirped the ship. “You see, avoiding hotshot pilots is built into my programming. If you had a _shred_ of navigational skill I wouldn’t even have been able to let you in through the door.”

“I’m sure there must be some mistake-”

“There isn’t,” said Beezelebub, with the first smile on their face since Crowley and Aziraphale materialized on the bridge, although by the look of things it probably wouldn’t last long. “He’s the other president of the Galaxy.” Seeing as how this was said with a completely straight face, Aziraphale concluded that this person was either an extraordinary liar or very delusional. He turned to Crowley, who nodded solemnly, as if this were all above board and, not for the first time since the day began, wondered at both his own and Crowley’s sanity. “Now,” Beelzebub continued, “the real question is what we’re going to do with _you_ two.”

N.E.W.T., who had just arrived on the bridge with some refreshments for their new guests, could tell from their tone that perhaps now was not the time. He had quite gone out of his way to analyze the preferences, cultural origins, and physiological responses to each organic being to craft a masterful spread, and now it would go to utter waste. His emotional response matrix, which was a prototype and certainly not ready to go out of beta, immediately began to radiate extremely high levels of distress, but at such a high frequency that none were able to hear him but the ship, who immediately took it upon herself to resolve the situation at once.

“We could take them back,” the Soothsayer suggested, with a sly tone that no one was able to recognize but N.E.W.T.

“Yes!” Beezlebub harped on this plan at once, because they had absolutely no idea what to do at all.

“Great! So you want me to turn around where all those men with guns are?” the ship asked, dubiously. “The guns they were trying to shoot you with before I got us out of here?”

“ _I_ got us out of here,” Gabriel griped, and absolutely no one paid him any mind.

“Perhaps -” began N.E.W.T., tentatively, “perhaps we might all - ah, feel a bit better after we’ve had some lunch?” Four pairs of eyes turned towards the robot and the very large serving platter he bore before him.

“Capital!” announced Gabriel.

* * *

This is how Aziraphale found himself next to Crowley at one end of an absurdly long table with a plate of sandwiches between them and a cup of something that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea. The left wall of the room was made of glass, and the marvel of space swirled past them. It was breathtaking and awe-inspiring and would have made Aziraphale weep if he would notice it. 

He did not.

He had other things on his mind than the jaw-dropping beauty of space that any Earth astronomer would have given his very prestigious chair at a very prestigious university to see.

Crowley had not touched him since they sprang apart on the bridge, and he would very much like to do something like hold his hand, or place a gentle hand on his knee, but this didn’t really seem like the place nor the time for that sort of thing. He approached their now revealed regard for each other with all the scattershot emotions of a man who has just seen almost everything he ever loved go up in flames and also been handed one of those large novelty checks for million dollars while out on the pavement watching it burn.

“So from what I can gather, someone’s been rather a naughty pair of presidents,” Crowley began, breaking the silence that had settled over them since N.E.W.T. whirred out of the room after delivering what apparently passed for lunch in the dark void of space.

“They stole me!” The ship may have been a bit more involved in the proceedings than was strictly necessary, but if you’ve only been around math nerds your whole life, telling you exactly what you can and can’t do, fiddling about in your programming in between gushing about algorithms and derivatives, you’d find yourself pretty thrilled to be along for the ride with three fugitives from justice and a very confused earthling too.

“Aren’t there some - some schematics you should be running?” Beelzebub blurted. “Shouldn’t you get started on those?”

“You know, there sure are!” said the ship. “I’ll leave you guys alone then.”

* * *

The truth was, that there _were_ no schematics for the ship to run. Unaware of the rest of the passengers, because the ship would certainly hesitate to call them “the crew,” the ship was currently taking them to the coolest, most interesting place in all the galaxy, carefully configured for their needs and wants. It was where Aziraphale might be able to fix his little “the earth just exploded” problem, where Beelzebub and Gabriel would find answers to their questions, where Crowley could find gardens filled with every plant in the whole galaxy.

And where the Soothsayer could be alone (well, alone _and_ with N.E.W.T.) for five minutes altogether.

The ship was taking them to Majorca.

* * *

“We’re trying to find Majorca,” Gabriel said, proudly, in response to Crowley’s query of “just what the hell they thought they were doing, anyway.”

“ _Majorca?_ ” Aziraphale had felt quite out of his depth for - well, if we’re going to be perfectly frank Aziraphale had felt rather out of his depth from the moment he realized he was an “adult” and was expected to do things that adults do, but in this _specific_ instance he had felt so far out of his depth since he woke up on an alien spaceship next to a fretting Crowley that he was certain the water pressure was going to crush his skull any minute. But Majorca?! Here, at last, was some familiarity, something he recognized, and Aziraphale almost shouted the word across the table at the joint (former, he supposed now) presidents of the galaxy. “Well you - you _can’t_!” He said this with near hysterical triumph. “It was destroyed - along with the rest of the Earth for - for”

“Earth?” Beelzebub muttered, unable to recognize death (or a bookNOTseller’s best approximation of it) ten feet from them, a memory wiggling in the back of their mind. “Earth? Why does that sound so familiar?”

“Isn’t that the planet Sandalphon is building his theme park on?” Gabriel asked them.

“No, no that’s Venus.”

“Oh that’s right!” Gabriel exclaimed. “He was _tearing down_ Earth to put up a parking lot!” The quiet that followed this proclamation was deafening. Crowley was desperately trying not to hum a song about a very similar situation which had instantly jumped into his head, while Aziraphale imitated a fish and gaped at the former presidents of the galaxy.

“To put up a - They destroyed the Earth, my home, home to millions - no, billions of people just to -” Gabriel shrugged.

“Not my department,” he said, in what he assumed was a suitable apology. “I’m sure you can take it up with the Bureau of Development at their next meeting, though.” He checked his watch. “Should be…. About two months from now.” At this, Aziraphale turned a very startling shade of red, and opened his mouth to emit what was almost certainly a tirade of apoplectic proportions when Beelzebub interrupted him.

“If you’re that worked up about it, you might as well come with us,” they said, waving their hand. “I think it’s rather obvious to everyone that we’re all a bit stuck together for now, and If we find Him he can probably put it all back right.”

“You mean She can,” Gabriel corrected her.

“Whoever,” Beelzebub said with a shrug.

“ _WHO ARE YOU TWO TALKING ABOUT?_ ” Aziraphale did shout this time, as would you if everyone in the room knew a big wonderful secret and no one thought to tell you. Three pairs of eyes blinked at him in slow shock before Crowley reached out and gently drew his fingers across the back of Aziraphale’s hand. The abject relief in both of them convinced him to further entwine their fingers.

“They’re trying to find the CEOs of Anjel and Demonik industries,” Crowley said, in what he hoped was a soothing voice. The last time he’d seen Aziraphale so distressed was when someone had snagged a first edition of some book out from under him at an auction, and Crowley certainly couldn’t improve his mood the way he had then. (Unless the ship could replicate chocolate croissants from one very specific bakery in Cornwall, that is.) “They’re - well, you know how all those capitalists back on Earth had all sorts drooling after them, idolizing them, making a very big deal about their ability to be born to the right sort of parents and being handed the right sorts of opportunities?”

“Yes.”

“Imagine if any of that adoration were actually _merited_.”

Aziraphale could not, and he said so.

“They’re the most brilliant minds of all time,” Beelzebub supplied. “And I mean that very literally.”

“I don’t think they can die!” said Gabriel.

“And we’re looking for them because….?” Crowley asked the other end of the table. “Haven’t they been missing for like, thousands of years?”

“Oh, tens of thousands,” Beelzebub agreed. “It’s why we’re having such a time trying to find Majorca. It’s like all the records of it just _vanished._ ” Crowley allowed half a moment for the mysterious hush that settled over the room to really settle in.

“Majorca is _gone_ ,” Aziraphale said, again. “Sandaf - Sandysong - Sandar - whatever his name is blew it up when he blew up the Earth.”

“Not _that_ Majorca,” Crowley said. “The original Majorca.”

“The… original…”

“Where do you think the name came from?”

“It’s a planet somewhere out _there_ ,” Beelzebub said disdainfully, throwing an arm out toward the pressurized glass windows through which all the beauty of space could be witnessed. “And we’re going to find it.”

“But why?” Crowley asked again. “What do you need from them?” Beelzebub and Gabriel shared a look. It was the sort of look in which one person (in this case Beelzebub) attempts to tell another (Gabriel, obviously) that he should keep his mouth shut. Unfortunately for Beelzebub, Gabriel got distracted by how the starlight reflected off their hair, and didn’t catch the look in the slightest.

“Because enough is enough!” Gabriel cheerfully shouted, and beside him Beelzebub put their head face down on the table. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, being stuck there on - Earth was it? But things have been pretty rough around here for about a year or so, and I think we can all agree that whatever point the universe is trying to make that we’re all quite tired of it. They can fix it.”

“We hope,” said Beelzebub into the table top.

“So, what,” Crowley began. “You’re just going to go to Majorca, a planet that no one has seen in thousands of years, somehow locate two of Them and, what, ask them to press pause on the Universe?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, we know that’s impossible,” Beelzebub spat, picking their head up from the table. “Haven’t you been paying attention? _We’re going to make them fix the timeline._ ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey friendos THE PLOT IS HERE.   
> Will our four (un)intrepid heroes find Majorca? Will Crowley and Aziraphale every find a moment alone on this ship? Will The Soothsayer get super tired of all of them and eject them into the cold void of space? Let me know what you think will happen next on the tumblz here [@soft-october-night](https://soft-october-night.tumblr.com/) and I'll see you soon!


End file.
